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Friday, November 7, 2014

Principle, Rigor and Execution Matter in U.S. Foreign Policy with George Friedman

This is a worthy article and it is fair which is refreshing. It clarifies the real constraints under which the USA must execute its foreign policy. It also becomes clear why it moves so slowly if at all.Presidents have involved themselves in foreign policy because they can without much serious constraint. In everything else they usually appeared to be bogged down. Yet this outlines the real world constraints.Unfortunately, doing nothing is also an option and often the unwise one. It really means that all choices are bad as present day Iraq shows us.

U.S. President Barack Obama has come under intense criticism for his
foreign policy, along with many other things. This is not unprecedented.
Former President George W. Bush was similarly attacked. Stratfor has
always maintained that the behavior of nations has much to do with the
impersonal forces driving it, and little to do with the leaders who are
currently passing through office. To what extent should American
presidents be held accountable for events in the world, and what should
they be held accountable for?

Expectations and Reality

I have always been amazed when presidents take credit for creating
jobs or are blamed for high interest rates. Under our Constitution, and
in practice, presidents have precious little influence on either. They
cannot act without Congress or the Federal Reserve concurring, and both
are outside presidential control. Nor can presidents overcome the
realities of the market. They are prisoners of institutional constraints
and the realities of the world.

Nevertheless, we endow presidents with magical powers and impose
extraordinary expectations. The president creates jobs, manages Ebola
and solves the problems of the world -- or so he should. This particular
president came into office with preposterous expectations from his
supporters that he could not possibly fulfill. The normal campaign promises of
a normal politician were taken to be prophecy. This told us more about
his supporters than about him. Similarly, his enemies, at the extremes,
have painted him as the devil incarnate, destroying the Republic for
fiendish reasons.

He is neither savior nor demon. He is a politician. As a politician,
he governs not by what he wants, nor by what he promised in the
election. He governs by the reality he was handed by history and his
predecessor. Obama came into office with a financial crisis well underway,
along with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. His followers might have
thought that he would take a magic wand and make them go away, and his
enemies might think that he would use them to destroy the country, but
in point of fact he did pretty much what Bush had been doing: He hung on
for dear life and guessed at the right course.

Bush came into office thinking of economic reforms and a foreign
policy that would get away from nation-building. The last thing he
expected was that he would invade Afghanistan during his first year in
office. But it really wasn't up to him. His predecessor, Bill Clinton,
and al Qaeda set his agenda. Had Clinton been more aggressive against al
Qaeda, Bush might have had a different presidency. But al Qaeda did not
seem to need that level of effort, and Clinton came into office as heir
to the collapse of the Soviet Union. And so on back to George
Washington.

Presidents are constrained by the reality they find themselves in and
the limits that institutions place on them. Foreign policy is what a
president wishes would happen; foreign affairs are what actually happen.
The United States
is enormously powerful. It is not omnipotent. There are not only limits
to that power, but unexpected and undesirable consequences of its use. I
have in mind the idea that had the United States not purged the Baathists in Iraq,
the Sunnis might not have risen. That is possible. But had the
Baathists, the party of the hated Saddam Hussein, remained in power, the
sense of betrayal felt by Shiites and Kurds at the sight of the United
States now supporting Baathists might have led to a greater explosion.
The constraints in Iraq were such that having invaded, there was no
choice that did not have a likely repercussion.

Governing a nation of more than 300 million people in a world filled
with nations, the U.S. president can preside, but he hardly rules. He is
confronted with enormous pressure from all directions. He knows only a
fraction of the things he needs to know in the maelstrom he has entered,
and in most cases he has no idea that something is happening. When he
knows something is happening, he doesn't always have the power to do
anything, and when he has the power to do something, he can never be
sure of the consequences. Everyone not holding the office is certain
that he or she would never make a mistake. Obama was certainly clear on
that point, and his successor will be as well.

Obama's Goals

All that said, let us consider what Obama is trying to achieve in the
current circumstances. It is now 2014, and the United States has been
at war since 2001 -- nearly this entire century so far. It has not gone
to war on the scale of 20th-century wars, but it has had multidivisional
engagements, along with smaller operations in Africa and elsewhere.

For any nation, this is unsustainable, particularly when there is no
clear end to the war. The enemy is not a conventional force that can be
defeated by direct attack. It is a loose network embedded in the
civilian population and difficult to distinguish. The enemy launches
intermittent attacks designed to impose casualties on U.S. forces under
the theory that in the long run the United States will find the cost
greater than the benefit.

In addition to these wars, two other conflicts have emerged. One is in Ukraine, where a pro-Western government has formed in Kiev to the displeasure of Russia, which proceeded to work against Ukraine. In Iraq, a new Sunni force has emerged, the Islamic State, which is partly a traditional insurgency and partly a conventional army.

Under the strategy followed until the chaos that erupted after the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya,
the response to both would be to send U.S. forces to stabilize the
situation. Since 1999 and Kosovo, the United States has been the primary
actor in military interventions. More to the point, the United States
was the first actor and used military force as its first option. Given
the global American presence imposed by the breadth of U.S. power, it is
difficult to decline combat when problems such as these arise. It is
the obvious and, in a way, easiest solution. The problem is that it is
frequently not a solution.

Obama has tried to create a different principle for U.S. operations.
First, the conflict must rise to the level that its outcome concerns
American interests. Second, involvement must begin with non-military or
limited military options. Third, the United States must operate with an
alliance structure including local allies, capable of effective
operation. The United States will provide aid and will provide limited
military force (such as airstrikes) but will not bear the main burden.
Finally, and only if the situation is of grave significance and can only
be dealt with through direct and major U.S. military intervention, the
United States will allow itself to become the main force.

It is a foreign policy both elegant and historically rooted. It is
also incredibly complicated. First, what constitutes the national
interest? There is a wide spread of opinion in the administration. Among
some, intervention to prevent human rights violations is in the
national interest. To others, only a direct threat to the United States
is in the national interest.

Second, the tempo of intervention is difficult to calibrate. The
United States is responding to an enemy, and it is the enemy's tempo of
operations that determines the degree of response needed.

Third, many traditional allies, like Germany, lack the means or
inclination to involve themselves in these affairs. Turkey, with far
more interest in what happens in Syria and Iraq than the United States,
is withholding intervention unless the United States is also involved
and, in addition, agrees to the political outcome. As Dwight D.
Eisenhower learned in World War II, an alliance is desirable because it
spreads the burden. It is also nightmarish to maintain because all the
allies are pursuing a range of ends outside the main mission.

Finally, it is extraordinarily easy to move past the first three
stages into direct interventions. This ease comes from a lack of clarity
as to what the national interest is, the enemy's tempo of operations
seeming to grow faster than an alliance can be created, or an alliance's
failure to gel.

Obama has reasonable principles of operation. It is a response to the
realities of the world. There are far more conflicts than the United
States has interests. Intervention on any level requires timing. Other
nations have greater interests in their future than the United States
does. U.S military involvement must be the last step. The principle fits
the strategic needs and constraints on the United States.
Unfortunately, clear principles frequently meet a murky world, and the
president finds himself needing to intervene without clarity.

Presidents' Limited Control

The president is not normally in control of the situation. The
situation is in control of him. To the extent that presidents, or
leaders of any sort, can gain control of a situation, it is not only in
generating principles but also in rigorously defining the details of
those principles, and applying them with technical precision, that
enables some semblance of control.

President Richard Nixon had two major strategic visions: to enter
into a relationship with China to control the Soviet Union, and to
facilitate an alliance reversal by Egypt, from the Soviet Union to the
United States. The first threatened the Soviet Union with a two-front
war and limited Soviet options. The second destroyed a developing
Mediterranean strategy that might have changed the balance of power.

Nixon's principle was to ally with nations regardless of ideology --
hence communist China and Nasserite Egypt. To do this, the national
interest had to be rigorously defined so that these alliances would not
seem meaningless. Second, the shift in relationships had to be carried
out with meticulous care. The president does not have time for such
care, nor are his talents normally suited for it, since his job is to
lead rather than execute. Nixon had Henry Kissinger, who in my opinion
and that of others was the lesser strategist, but a superb technician.

The switch in China's alignment became inevitable once fighting broke
out with the Soviets. Egypt's break with the Soviets became inevitable
when it became apparent to Anwar Sadat that the Soviets would underwrite
a war but could not underwrite a peace. Only the United States could.
These shifts had little to do with choices. Neither Mao Zedong nor Sadat
really had much of a choice.

Where choice exists is in the tactics. Kissinger was in charge of
implementing both shifts, and on that level it was in fact possible to
delay, disrupt or provide an opening to Soviet counters. The level at
which foreign policy turns into foreign affairs is not in the
enunciation of the principles but in the rigorous definition of those
principles and in their implementation. Nixon had Kissinger, and that
was what Kissinger was brilliant at: turning principles into successful
implementation.

The problem that Obama has, which has crippled his foreign policy, is
that his principles have not been defined with enough rigor to provide
definitive guidance in a crisis. When the crisis comes, that's when the
debate starts. What exactly is the national interest, and how does it
apply in this or that case? Even if he accomplishes that, he still lacks
a figure with the subtlety, deviousness and frankly ruthlessness to put
it into place. I would argue that the same problem haunted the George
W. Bush and Clinton administrations, although their challenges were less
daunting and therefore their weakness less visible.

There is a sphere in which history sweeps a president along. The most
he can do is adjust to what must be, and in the end, this is the most
important sphere. In another sphere -- the sphere of principles -- he
can shape events or at least clarify decisions. But the most important
level, the level on which even the sweep of history is managed, is the
tactical. This is where deals are made and pressure is placed, and where
the president can perhaps shift the direction of history.

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has not had a
president who operated consistently and well in the deeper levels of
history. This situation is understandable, since the principles of the
Cold War were so powerful and then suddenly gone. Still, principles
without definition and execution without precision cannot long endure.

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Jan 2015 - 3 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO rigorously described, September 2010 I am pleased to report that my essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS' has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) and appeared in their June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in relativity,as well as differential geometry(pure math) and of course analysis. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled 'Paradigms Shift'. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data and record impressions and interpretations on material read. Do join my blog and receive Four items of interest daily Monday through Saturday.